


blood in the parlor where milady did fall

by stellerssong, the_everqueen



Series: come, love, sleep [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Changeling Eliza, Changelings, Childhood Trauma, Gen, POV Child, child endangerment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 16:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14772746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellerssong/pseuds/stellerssong, https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_everqueen/pseuds/the_everqueen
Summary: Eliza fails to fit in, makes a new friend, and learns an important lesson.("Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.Elves are terrific. They beget terror...No one ever said elves are nice." ~Terry Pratchett)





	blood in the parlor where milady did fall

Summer is not Eliza’s season. She’s only six years old, but she knows this so wholly and entirely that it surprises her when people don’t. It’s the easiest thing in the world for her to say that summer is Peggy’s season, specifically the bright flowers and blue skies and rolling green fields of early June. It’s Daddy’s season too, although he’s more the lazy evenings after the heat’s broken and the fireflies have started to come out. She knows Mommy and Ange, too: Mommy is wintertime, the bone-deep watchful silence of midwinter’s night under a full moon, and Ange is crisp air and red-amber-gold leaves and slanting, honey-colored dollops of sunshine. Eliza herself is spring; new leaves and running water and crystal-clear mornings still bitter with frost, and she feels most _herself_ when the weather and the earth match how she feels on the inside.

But summer is nice, for several reasons. She’s on break from school, which is always good. Doesn’t have to put up with the other kids’ whispers and unfriendly stares and the odd bouts of teasing that flare up from time to time, no matter how she tries to act like everyone else.

(Is it her fault they can’t see the tiny jewel-colored flower sprites flitting through the bushes, screeching insults at each other in their piping voices? They’re easy to spot, but Jesse and Will and Emma call her a liar and weirdo even when she points directly at the little creatures, and run off laughing. Is it her fault that when she picked the safety scissors up like she was told, the blades gripped securely in one fist, the metal burned her so badly that she screamed and flung them across the room? She had the welt on her palm to prove it, but Miss Martin had just frowned and picked up the scissors herself like they didn’t hurt her at all. Is it her fault that no one will ever _tell_ her what she’s doing wrong?)

Summer’s good for playing outside, too, maybe even nicer than spring. Eliza is more susceptible to sunburn than either of her sisters, with her light peachy-gold complexion, but she’s not like Katie at school, all white-blond hair and cheeks stinging pink from May through October. As long as she finds a patch of shade to linger in then it’s no big deal. And there’s plenty of shade down here by the creek, under the trees lush with their summer growth and the slight overhang of the bank where the watercourse bends. Cool and refreshing without the canned-air reek that wheezes out of the air conditioning indoors. 

Eliza’s not _supposed_ to be by the creek, of course, not without Mommy or Daddy there to watch her, but that seems like a very silly rule to her. For one thing, the water’s only inches deep here, so it doesn’t matter that she can’t swim in the slightest, and for another, if anything scary comes after her—well, she’s very good at going unseen. It’s how she got down here in the first place, sat there quiet and still and breathing slow slow slow until Mommy’s eyes started to slip over her without seeing, until Angie and Peggy ran past without even turning their heads in her direction. And after that it had been the easiest thing in the world to simply stand up and walk down the lawn and into the trees, crouch to slide down the earthy slope of the creek bank to the water’s edge. If she can do that to Mommy and her sisters, she thinks, who know her better than anyone else alive, she has to imagine it’d only be easier to do to someone who doesn’t even know her at all. So she’s safe as safe can be.

The excursion’s already been worth it—Eliza’s gathered a handful of interesting pebbles, glistening with creek water, banded with milky veins or speckled with flecks of silvery mica. She’ll bring them home, and they’ll dry gray and boring in an hour or two, but she knows the secret of shining them back up with spit so you can see the beauty in them again. _Use water from the sink, Betsey, that’s dirty_ , Daddy will chide her. It’s not the same, though; there’s a power in giving them a part of yourself, and she can already picture the way they’ll look lined up on the edge of the bookshelf, hiding in plain sight until she helps them sparkle again.

Even better than the rocks, she might see a frog or two, if she’s lucky. You can’t bring frogs home, of course (Mommy yells and jumps when you show them to her), but they’re still fun to watch as they scoot through the water or chirp back and forth at each other. She’ll have to watch carefully, though. Mommy won’t be fooled by her disappearing act for long, and Eliza will have to sneak back up to the meadow soon or risk getting caught straying.

But Eliza has good eyes. And, she’s learned, animals can be fooled by her don’t-see-me act too, even if they’re a bit better at catching her than people are. She kneels there, in the mud and loose gravel. Makes herself a little bubble of empty space. Stares at a little snag of twigs and debris running up against a fallen branch in the water. If she were a frog, she’d hop out just there to enjoy the sun. Any second now, one of them will climb out of the water. Any—

A tingling prickle on the skin of her bubble. Eyes on her, right, but this isn’t the diffuse and quickly passing gaze of someone she’s tricked. There’s intent there, and the prickle doesn’t die away after a moment. If anything, it gets stronger, more considering, and the bubble shimmers and evaporates into nothing without Eliza meaning to dismiss it. Her breath comes a little faster.

Someone _saw_ her. Someone sees her.

Someone, or something.

Eliza looks up.

There’s a deer on the far bank of the creek, watching her. Or—something that looks like a deer, anyway. Eliza couldn’t put it into words, but something about it seems _wrong_ , somehow, despite the fact that it has antlers like a proper deer, a sandy gray coat with a blaze of white at the throat, four legs. Like being able to tell the difference between a drawing of a deer and a real thing. Something in the eyes, maybe; they’re large and dark and liquid, like they ought to be, but with a knowing flicker in them that’s more than animal.

Eliza stands up in the shallows, faces the deer-thing down. She should be scared, she thinks, but at the moment she’s more curious than anything. A deer, that’s much bigger than the usual disguises she sees the hidden folk of meadow and wood throw on. What could be hiding under there? “Hello,” she says. “Why do you look like that?”

“Like what?” says the deer-thing. It has a grown-up voice, higher than Daddy’s, but with a little lilt in it like a satisfied smile. It’s pleasant to listen to.

“Like a deer. I know you’re not one.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Well, you’re talking,” Eliza points out, without any particular surprise. She’s well aware that things like that can happen, even if everyone at school seems to find the idea ridiculous. “And you don’t look right. You look all…” She sifts through her limited vocabulary, doesn’t turn up any words that quite describe the way the deer-thing looks. “…All _zompy_ ,” she manages at last. “Anyway. I can see it’s not real.”

The deer-thing laughs, sweet as a silver bell.

“How clever of you to see it. There aren’t many little girls whose eyes are so sharp.”

Eliza preens a little bit. “I pay attention. None of the other kids in my class do. They can’t even see the sprites that live in the flowers, out by the playground. And they’re not hard to see _at all_.”

“No, they aren’t. Your classmates must be very, very silly.” The deer-thing takes a graceful step through the underbrush, another, another, drawing closer to Eliza.

“They’re—they’re all right,” Eliza admits. “Miss Martin says that everyone is good at different things. Maybe they’re just not good at seeing. Like I’m not so good at writing my letters the right way around, even though I try to remember how they go.”

“That might be so.”

But they’re getting away from the point, and Eliza is still curious. So she presses a little harder: “But why do you look like that?”

“I’m in disguise. Hiding.”

“But that’s silly, you already know I can see you!” Eliza pouts. “The sprites in the bushes at school do that to me too. Pretend to be flowers. I have to tell them that they’re not hiding right and that I can tell the difference.”

“Well, obviously I’m not hiding from clever girls like you. I’m only hiding from silly ones. Ones who don’t notice. Ones who don’t see.”

“There aren’t any of those here.” That’s not entirely true; Angie is nearby with Peggy, playing out on the lawn or in the scrubby meadow that borders the woods and the creek bed, and neither of them can _see_ like Eliza can, but Eliza objects on principle to the idea of calling either of them _silly_ in that particular way. “I mean, you don’t have to hide from me. So you should show me what you really look like.”

“I’ll show you if you show me,” says the deer-thing, its ears twitching playfully. Eliza frowns.

“This _is_ what I really look like.”

“Now, that doesn’t sound like the clever little girl I’ve been talking to at all.” A slither of pebbles and loose dirt as the deer-thing descends from the creek bank. Crunch of coarse sand under its dainty hooves. It’s standing on a level with Eliza, now, down in the creek bed. “Anyone with sharp enough eyes could see that that isn’t your real face either. It looks—ah— _zompy_. As you said.” It cocks its head. “So why don’t you show me? And then I’ll show you. Tit for tat. A fair bargain.”

Eliza fiddles with her handful of pebbles. Looks at her muddy feet. “…Can’t.”

“Oh, no?”

“I—don’t know how to take it off.” She shuffles one foot in the mud, leaving a shallow furrow. “Sometimes it—comes off by itself, a little. Or a lot. But I don’t do it on purpose. And I don’t know how to make it go back, I just have to wait until it does on its own. Mommy and Daddy don’t like it when it happens. But—there’s nothing I can do.”

“I could teach you, if you wanted. Teach you to take it off and put it back on, so well no one would ever know you’d done it.” The deer-thing makes a face at her that a deer really shouldn’t be able to make. “Lords and Ladies know you need it. How long have you been wearing that tattered old thing? It’s a wonder it hasn’t gone all to pieces of its own accord.”

“It—it can do that?” Eliza looks down at her hands, at the skin-that-is-not-her-skin.

“If you wear it out, yes,” the deer-thing replies. “And you’re—how old are you, little one?”

“I’m six years old.”

“Ah. Then, yes, that would be why it’s started to slip. It’s like clothes. If you wear a thing every day you’ll start to wear holes in it, and soon it’ll be more hole than cloth, and if you keep wearing it after that—why, it’ll get so flimsy that a stiff breeze would blow it to shreds.”

“That’s not—Mommy buys us new clothes if we get holes in ours. So they don’t fall apart.”

“Wh—yes, obviously, of course she does,” the deer-thing says, giving its head an impatient shake. “But she can’t see the holes in your disguise, can she?”

“Um. N-no.”

“So how could she know you need a new one? She’d let you wear that one until it sloughed off you like a snakeskin. And _then_ what kind of state would you be in?”

Eliza says nothing. Thinks, with an awful pang, of what that would be like if it happened at school, in front of all the other kids. How they’d mock and jeer at her outsize ears, the tree-bark roughness of her skin in patches. They might pull her hair, snap the vine-stems of it as carelessly as they’d pull a flower up by the roots. They might chase her, shove her—might _touch her back_ —

“And I don’t suppose there’s anyone else who could patch it up for you—up there.” A nod in the direction of the meadow and the lawn and the house.

“They…it isn’t their fault. It’s not.” An unexpected spark of defensiveness flares up. “They’re not like the kids at school. They love me. They take care of me. They do their best. They just…”

“They’re just human. I know. Human like the rest of them, in the end.” The deer-thing looks up at the trees above them for a moment, wry, considering. “They love you, you say. I’m sure that’s true, for however humans understand love. But they don’t know magic. And you said yourself, your Mommy and Daddy don’t like it when your glamour slips. Your disguise, your face, whatever you want to call it.”

“They just—know it would scare people, if they saw, scare the other kids—”

“—Scare _them_. Yes.”

“It’s not their fault,” Eliza repeats, but her voice sounds thin and unconvincing. “I know it’s—that I’m—wrong. Ugly.”

“How generous of them to keep you as long as you keep your ugliness hidden away under a mask. How long would that generosity last if your mask were broken, I wonder?”

“I—”

“Where would you go once they threw you out? It’s happened before. You know it could happen again.”

Terror grips Eliza’s throat in a cold fist. Mommy and Daddy don’t ever put it in those words— _you were born to different parents, Eliza, parents who, well, weren’t quite like us and Peggy and Angie, but they gave you to us, and we’re your parents now, and we love you just as much as we love your sisters_ —but she recognizes the truth in that phrase, can feel it inside her, digging at a hollow space just left of center in her chest. Knows it, every time her disguise peels away, and she sees the flash of terror in Mommy’s eyes, feels the tremble in Daddy’s hands as he ushers her out of sight.

She wasn’t given. She wasn’t a gift.

She was left.

She was _thrown out._

“Teach me,” Eliza says, sharp and desperate, taking a step towards the deer-thing so the cool creek water laps around her ankles. “Please, please teach me. I don’t want it to go away. I don’t want them to look at me like—like how the others do. I want to be good. I want to be _right_.”

“You can be, my dear. You have it in you, the magic, you know. You can learn. And it would be so, so easy for a clever little girl like you. Why, I’ll bet I could teach you right now, if you wanted me to.”

“Yes, I do want it, I do! I promise I’ll pay attention the whole entire time, I won’t daydream even a little bit, you’ll see, I’ll—”

“ _Eliza! Eliza, where are you?_ ”

Eliza jumps. Oh, no, no, no, not _now_. Couldn’t Mommy have waited just a few more minutes before catching on? She looks in the direction of the approaching calls, looks back at the deer-thing. It makes a strange sort of squinting expression that she thinks might look like a raised eyebrow, if it were on a human’s face. “You’ve been missed,” it observes.

“I—oh, no, please—hurry, hurry, show me now before she catches me—!”

“It’ll take longer than that to teach you, I’m afraid, even if you’re very quick. She’ll be here in a minute or two, by the sound of it.” Eliza’s mouth works soundlessly in horror and frustration. No, no, it’s not fair, the deer-thing can’t lay the solution to all her problems in front of her like that and then just whisk it away! There must be something they can do, something she can say to convince it—the deer-thing can change its face so completely, can’t it freeze time while it teaches her, or make Mommy forget Eliza’s missing for a few minutes more, or work _some_ magic to fix this?

“Hmm.” The deer-thing interrupts her panicked thoughts, bowing its head to examine her more closely. It narrows its eyes. “I wonder—could you come back here tomorrow? Alone? We wouldn’t want to upset your Mommy and Daddy by letting them see you with your glamour off, now would we?”

It takes Eliza a second to figure out what he’s getting at, but then she does, all at once, and a warm swell of hope rises up in her chest. “Wait, you’ll—you’ll still be here tomorrow? You’ll fix it, the glamour? You could teach me then?”

“I can spare one night, Miss Eliza. It’s not such a long time, after all. So, do you think—?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Eliza interrupts, forgetting what she’s been told about that being rude in her excitement. “I can come. I _will_ come. I’ll come as soon as I wake up, if you want.”

“As you wish. But do be certain it’s tomorrow. Before sunset. I’ve an important errand to run for my mistress, and even though we’re friends now, I can only delay a night and day before I have to be off.”

“That’s long enough, that’s plenty of time, I’ll be down here, right here, before sunset.”

“And it really must be alone. I mean, your parents won’t be happy to see you without your glamour, but aside from that, my mistress has bound me to move in secrecy. I’ll be in terrible trouble if she finds out you’ve told the _grown-ups_ I was here.”

“I won’t tell. It wouldn’t be fair if you got in trouble, it’s not your fault. And I’m not a tattletale.” Eliza pauses for a moment. “…We’re friends, you said. You and me.”

“Why not? Why wouldn’t we be?” The deer-thing’s mouth gapes a little, its corners turning up; it takes Eliza a second to realize it’s smiling. “We have a secret together now. Isn’t that what friends do? Share secrets?”

Eliza nods, her heart leaping in her chest, even though she’s maybe not 100% sure that that is, in fact, what friends do. She hasn’t had very much experience with them. Friends help each other, though, she knows that, that’s what all the storybooks say. And the deer-thing is going to help her. So they must be, they really must be...

“ _Elizabeth Schuyler! Do not make me count to three!_ ”

“Ooh, best do as she says,” the deer-thing says, already retreating towards the far bank with trepidation in its eyes. “Threes make for powerful cantrips. Shouldn’t provoke her if she’s already at that point.” A twitch of its tail, an airy leap, and it’s out of the creek, ferns rustling around its slender legs.

 _What’s a cantrip_ , Eliza wants to ask, and _what’s so special about threes_ , but there’s no time. She’ll have to remember to ask tomorrow. With a great deal less grace than the deer-thing, she shoves her fistful of pebbles into her pocket, scrabbles for hand- and footholds to help her clamber up the slope of the near bank. When the grade evens out, she pushes herself to her feet, turning to wave goodbye, although she knows the deer-thing hasn’t got arms or hands to wave back.

And, oh—her stomach lurches unpleasantly—she’s forgotten to be polite. The deer-thing is doing her this great favor, waiting around for her for a whole day, and she hasn’t even said her introductions and how-do-you-dos like Mommy and Daddy and Miss Martin have told her so, so, so many times you have to do when you’re meeting a new friend.

“It was nice to meet you,” she calls softly from the top of the bank. The deer-thing turns, dips its chin in acknowledgement. “Um—what’s your name? I forgot to ask.”

“You can call me Lankin,” it replies. “Long Lankin, or Bold Lankin, if you feel the need to embellish, which sometimes folk do.”

“…Lan-kin. That sounds weird. Is that your _real_ name?” Eliza asks suspiciously. Another one of those chiming-bell laughs.

“Funny, funny, funny little changeling. I’ll give you a true face, in time, but you’re far too young to be dealing in true names. I’ll answer to Lankin. I’ll know you mean me, if you say it. Isn’t that good enough?”

“ _Eliza_ ,” comes Mommy’s voice again, a bit closer this time. Eliza turns toward it, unbidden.

“See?” says the—says _Lankin_. “They call and you come. Even though Eliza’s not your _real_ name either, is it?”

He’s right, technically, her full name is _Elizabeth Schuyler_ , and she knows it, even if she sometimes gets the S and the Z mixed up in her head so it comes out _Elisabeth Zchuyler_ on paper. But—that’s not what he means. Another painful jab at a hollow space. Sometimes it feels like she’s nothing but hollow spaces and missing words.

“It’s not. But I don’t—I don’t have anything else for them to call me.”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you.” Something curls in his tone, soft and unpleasant, but before Eliza can put her finger on it he’s retreated back into the green-dappled shadows. “Until tomorrow, then, Miss Eliza. Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

And then he’s gone, with a parting flick of his white tail. Eliza peers into the woods, trying for one last glimpse, but there’s nothing to see; it’s as if he never existed. Tomorrow, though, tomorrow, tomorrow, she’ll see him tomorrow and he’ll teach her and she’ll learn to be good, finally, she’ll fix everything. With that pleasant thought buoying her, Eliza clambers up through the brush, out into the sunlight.

 

—

 

Eliza goes to bed that night fairly trembling with excitement, certain she’s not going to sleep a wink. She fully intends to slip out first thing in the morning, climb down into the creek in the dark and have her lesson (her _magic_ lesson, she corrects herself with a delicious thrill) then and there, but it ends up not being that easy.

She oversleeps, of course, as she always does, and by the time Mommy comes to get her up the day’s dawned gray and muggy, a crushing dampness in the air. Mommy and Daddy insist on keeping them inside, no matter how they beg to be allowed out to play, and by noon the sky’s gone dark and it’s started raining, a steady downpour that looks like it’s going to flood the entire world before it lets up. Eliza sits by the bedroom window, her forehead pressed against the glass. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Stares out at the darker green furrow past the edge of the lawn, where the creek lies. The house is loud with the rattle of raindrops on the window panes, the shrieks and laughter of Angie and Peggy rampaging up and down the halls, squirrelly from the change in the weather, a thousand other tiny tiny sounds that no one else seems to hear.

Eliza can’t care about any of that, though. Not now. It’s almost more than she can bear just to go downstairs for lunch, and after that’s done she scurries right back up to the window. If she watches hard enough, she imagines, maybe Lankin will feel it. Maybe it’ll freeze him in his tracks, like his eyes froze her, or maybe she’ll catch him leaving and be able to run out to him before anyone can catch her. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Daddy bursts in on her, then, tries to tempt her into a board game with him and Angie and Peggy. Eliza says nothing, just fixes him with a sad, silent stare until the determined smile slides off his face. “Maybe later, then, Bets?” he tries, already backing out of the room. “I’ll come and see if you feel like playing with us then.”

Even his kind, quiet voice grates like sandpaper on her ears. Not his fault, it’s just not what she wants to hear right now, so her brain won’t tolerate it. Although, if this rain doesn’t let up, she might never get a chance to hear the thing she does want to hear. Her sigh of despair clouds in droplets on the cool glass.

It’s late afternoon, practically evening, by the time the rain peters out. The clouds seethe for a few minutes before parting to a glory of rich golden sunlight, the long slanting beams touched here and there with wisps of iron-gray. _Time to go_ , Eliza tells herself, but then it’s dinnertime, and no amount of complaining will convince Mommy to set her free until she’s at least cleared half her plate. She does, with great ill grace, but even _then_ when she leaps out of her chair and charges for the door she’s stopped in her tracks. _It’s all muddy out, Eliza, and there are bugs and things, and it’ll be dark soon. Outdoors will still be there tomorrow. You can go play then_.

Eliza tries to protest, but she’s not good at arguing even at the best of times, and just now she can’t help but get stuck on all the things she can’t say, ends up red-faced and frustrated and silent. Mommy and Daddy aren’t pleased by this show of temper, and before she knows it she finds herself whisked upstairs, prepared for bed on the grounds that _someone sounds a little tired to me, Eliza, maybe some extra sleep tonight would be good for you. You’ve been grumpy and out-of-sorts all day, after all._ No, no, no, no, _no_ , this is the opposite of what she needs, but the secret ties itself in a hard knot in her throat. All she can do is mutely let herself be led through the motions of brushing teeth and combing hair and putting on pajamas. And then she’s sitting there in bed, staring out the window she’s been staring out of all day, feeling hope dribble away as the sunlight fades.

This calls for desperate measures. Eliza checks that the door to the bedroom is halfway open, pulls it a little closer to closed. Not all the way, that would attract notice, but partway is normal, Mommy and Daddy know she sometimes needs the quiet. This done, she strides back to the window and throws it open. The spreading oak tree outside is a friend of Eliza’s—she’s spent long afternoons talking to it, sitting among its roots and running her fingers over and over and over the half-familiar texture of its rough bark. Perhaps another child would balk at the idea of jumping from the second-floor window to the nearest branch, and then climbing down slippery rain-wet bark to the ground, but not Eliza. She knows the tree won’t let her fall. She clambers carefully up onto the windowsill, wobbles a bit, tenses to jump—

“What are you _doing_?”

Eliza squeaks in surprise, her arms pinwheeling, and topples backwards into the room, landing on her rear end on the carpet with a stinging _thump_. She scrambles to her feet to find Angie staring at her from the doorway, her eyes wide with shock.

“Nothing,” Eliza says, high and unconvincing.

“That’s not true,” Angie shoots back immediately. “No one just tries to _jump out a window_ for nothing. You were trying to sneak out, weren’t you? Because you got sent to bed?”

“N-no—”

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. Uh. I mean. Out,” Eliza deflects. “Just—out. I’m tired of being stuck inside all day.”

“Oh, I am too! Take me with you,” Angie says, her suspicious expression softening into excitement. “It’s so boring, and Mom and Dad won’t listen when I tell them I’ve read all my books, and I don’t want to play any of our games, and—”

“No, I can’t,” Eliza says quickly. “I’m going alone. I wanna play by myself.”

“That isn’t _fair!_ I’ve been cooped up all day, same as you, you can’t just leave without taking me with you.”

“Stop, stop, stop shouting, they’re gonna hear!” Eliza drops her voice to a stage whisper. “Actually, I’m going to meet someone. A friend. And he’s shy, he doesn’t want anyone but me to see him.”

“That sounds like a lie. You’re making that up.”

“No I’m not!” The injustice stings like a slap; she’s used to being accused of that by other kids, but not by _Angelica_. “It’s true, it really is,” she insists, turning fully to Angie and shaking her by the arm. “You have to believe me. I have to go alone, I really do, he made me promise.”

“Why’d he do something like that?”

“Because—he’s like me, Angie.”

“He’s—?”

“He’s—not—he’s not _human_.” Eliza squeezes Angie’s arm harder, pleading. “Angie, please, he promised he was going to teach me something, something important, something I need to know, only no one can know he was here or else he’ll be in trouble and I can’t do that because we’re friends and Angie, Angie, _please_.”

“Ouch! Eliza, that hurts!” A moment of struggle; Angie jerks her arm away, clutches at the angry red marks Eliza’s grip has left. Eliza startles back and bumps against the windowsill.

“Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t—you know I didn’t mean—”

“Then why’d you do it?” Angie snaps. Eliza bites her lip. No answer to that.

They stand there in silence for a few moments, Angie breathing hard, Eliza barely breathing at all. Eliza feels, like a fingertip running down her back inch by inch, the sun slipping closer to the horizon. Summer, so the sun sets late, but maybe Lankin’s grown tired of waiting for a silly little girl like her, has already left on his important errand, never mind that it’s still light out. And besides, she’s broken her promise not to tell anyone—or, no. No. _Come alone. Don’t tell the grown-ups_. That’s what he said, and Angie’s not a grown-up, she’s Eliza’s sister. Surely that doesn’t count.

“Come back,” Angie says.

“What?”

“If I—if I let you go—you have to come back. Mom and Dad will be angry if you don’t. _I’ll_ be angry. So angry I’ll never forgive you, ever. So you have to come back. Promise.”

“I do. I will. Where else do I have to go?” Eliza manages a shred of smile. “And, um. Maybe if he teaches me really well. I’ll be able to teach—“

“Shut up,” Angie says fiercely. “If you’re not back before it gets dark, I’m telling Mom and Dad. So you’d better go.” She rubs her bruised arm. “Go _on_.”

Eliza does.

The tree sees her safe down to the ground, just as she’d suspected it would, its boughs rustling with a slow greeting even in the breezeless air. Any other day Eliza would pause to listen, hold herself still as a stump to catch every creak and shiver, but not now. As soon as her feet touch leaf mulch and grass, she’s running, as fast as her legs will carry her, down over the lawn and border meadow and through the long grass and into the tree cover. She stumbles on a loose stone as she descends the bank, doesn’t bother to stand, lets the momentum carry her forward until she skids to a stop and swings her legs over and hops down with a squishy _splosh_ into the mud and shallow water. Panting, she straightens up, looks around as she catches her breath. Still a few beams of late sunlight shining down into the hollow here. The dread twisting her heart slackens. She’s made it in time.

“I’m here,” she says loudly, her face pointed towards the patch of fern Lankin had disappeared into earlier. No response. Silly her, hadn’t he said that? _Call me by the name I’ve given, and I’ll come_.

“Lankin?” she tries. Weird sensation of calling a grown-up—or someone who feels like a grown-up, at least—by name. Another attempt: “M-Mister Lankin?”

Silence.

“Hello? Mister Lankin?”

Silence.

“Lankin, please, it’s me, I’m here—”

“At your service, Miss Eliza,” murmurs a voice just behind her. Eliza spins around, and there’s the deer-thing, standing casual as anything on the house side of the creek. His ears swivel towards her. Eliza stomps her foot, _splash_.

“You scared me! Were you right there that whole time? Did I walk past you?”

“Yes, but don’t be too upset with yourself. I know lots and lots and _lots_ of tricks to hiding, even from sharp-eyed girls like you.”

“You don’t have to hide from _me_ , didn’t you say that yourself? And that was so mean, I thought you left!”

“And I thought you weren’t coming at all. It’s awfully late for a little girl to be out by herself. Thought you’d changed your mind, and didn’t want to learn from me.”

“Don’t be stupid, of course I still want to learn!” Eliza yelps, her temper flaring—and then flinches, crosses her arms hard over her chest. Feels something rougher-textured than skin under her shirt, under her hands, just for a moment, before it fades again. She squeezes herself tightly, trying to will her heart to slow down.

“Something wrong?” asks Lankin.

“It’s—it’s—” She’s having a hard time piecing the words together through her startle. “I—got excited. And when I get too excited, it—my face—the not-real one, I mean—it slips more. I don’t know why. It just does.”

“Yes. Magic and emotion go hand in hand, my dear. You wouldn’t have learned that, perhaps, but it’s true. And when the magic is as shaky as your poor little glamour is…best be careful not to laugh too loud. Or cry too hard. Or much of anything, really.” Lankin picks his way down into the creek again. A glimmer from one of the upper windows of the house tangles in the tines of his antlers. “A lot to ask of a little thing like you.”

“I’m not little, I’m _six_.”

“Ah, forgive me. Even so. Patching your glamour might be easier than learning never to smile again, eh? Lucky thing Lankin’s here to give you a hand.” He raises a hoof, snorts at himself. “Speaking of which. We have an agreement we’ve left unresolved. _I’ll show you mine if you show me yours_ , wasn’t it?”

The deer-shape wavers, blurs like heat-haze—and just like that, there’s a man standing before Eliza instead of a slightly wrong deer. He shakes himself all over, tosses a sheet of raven’s wing-black hair over his shoulder, carefully brushes off and tweaks his clothing. He’s dressed strangely, more like a hunter out of one of Eliza’s picture books than anything, with his long cloak and tunic all in mottled shades of green. More striking, though, is his face; Eliza can’t think of any word to describe him but _beautiful_ , even though that doesn’t quite capture it. It’s almost frightening how perfect his features are, jaw and cheekbones sharp as blades, delicate pink lips and porcelain skin more like a doll’s than a person’s. His eyes are much like the deer-shape’s had been, though, under their heavy lids and dark lashes. Deep and glittering, more iris to them than white. That’s comforting, somehow.

 _He’s like me_. Which is maybe rude of her to think, even though that’s how she explained this to Angie. She’s not beautiful like Lankin is, not even with her glamour on. But her eyes are like that too, when she’s not hiding the truth of them. _I’m not alone. He’s like me_.

Lankin raises an eyebrow and Eliza realizes far too late that she’s been gawking. She snaps her mouth shut, clamps her lips together to keep it from falling open again, drops her gaze to somewhere around Lankin’s knees. Good, good, she has to be good, has to prove she’s worthy of this lesson.

“There, that’s my end of the bargain,” says Lankin. “Your turn now. No, don’t make that face at me, I know, you’ve already said _but I can’t take it off on my own_. I’ll help you. Here.” He cocks his head, very like the deer-thing for a second. “Not backing out on me, are you?”

“N-no. I’m not.” But he’s very tall, looming over her as he moves closer, and he’s going to take her disguise off, he’s going to _look_ at her, going to _see_. She can’t suppress the urge to step back towards the far bank, just a little. “Promise. Promise you’ll help me put it back on after.”

“I promise, little one.” A faint amused smile plays about his lips for a moment, and then he reaches down, traces one finger along the edge of her face, just barely touching her skin. Stops, just at the hinge of her jaw. “There, you feel it? Feel the catch. No, don’t touch, there’s no need. Close your eyes. Feel with your mind.”

 _That makes no sense, minds don’t have hands or fingers_ , Eliza wants to protest, but she wanted to learn, and she’s learned in school to follow directions, even if they make no sense, so she lowers her hand, closes her eyes, furrows her brow. Doesn’t quite know how to _feel with her mind_ , but she focuses very hard on the point where Lankin’s finger is hovering. And—

“Oh. Oh, I feel it. It’s like, there’s a, like when you fold a paper in half—”

“Yes, yes, that’s just right.” Eliza scrunches her face up even harder, trains all her attention on that strange little crease in reality, and Lankin continues, “Pay attention, now. We’re going to unfold the paper. Take ahold of that catch, there—with your mind, again, only boors use their hands—and simply pull it apart. Think of opening, expanding, dissolving. Just like— _so_ —”

It always feels odd when her disguise slips off—there’s a moment of sudden chill, no matter how warm the weather is, like she’s been taken and dunked into an icy pond with no clothes to protect her. And the whole thing is off, this time, off and gone and shredded to pieces, so that sense of nakedness is even stronger. She winces, shivers to adjust, blinks her eyes open. Rolls her shoulders. Her shirt stretches against the great ragged-edged hollow where a human girl would have a back, the fabric snagging a bit on the rough whorls of bark at the rim.

“That’s it. There you are,” Lankin breathes, circling Eliza slowly to see her from every angle. Trying to make sure he’s gotten all the glamour off, Eliza supposes, although she can’t stop the leafy vines of her hair from rustling and curling away from his gaze. They don’t like being Looked at, and neither does Eliza. She takes a deep breath, tries to gather that don’t-see-me stillness around her that lets her hide from her family, hoping it’ll dull the edge of his stare. Lankin makes a little noise of surprise.

“What?”

“Oh, I didn’t expect you to be able to cast a Concealment like that. Really _cast_ one, I mean, not just pull it on without knowing what you’re doing.”

“It has a name? It’s—this is magic?” She runs her palm over her arm, the don’t-see-me tingling against her bark-skin as it dissipates.

“Of course it is. How smart of you, figuring it out by yourself. See, you’re already such a quick learner!”

Eliza’s lips twist in a little grimace. Embarrassing, having those words heaped on her over and over. She knows she’s not smart, or quick, or clever; all she’s doing is something that comes as natural to her as breathing. No skill in it, not like how Angie is already reading chapter books with no pictures and learning her times tables. But Lankin is already moving on without her, so she scrabbles to follow along. She’d _promised_ not to daydream.

“Well, this makes things easy for me, if you’re already doing that much, and with intention behind it to boot. The glamour’s much the same, you’re just telling the world what it ought to be seeing, only instead of _nothing_ it’s something specific, something you decide on. Yes?”

“Um. Yes?” That sounds difficult. She has enough trouble getting people to believe her when she tells them about things that are actually there.

“Very well then. We’ll start there. Show me your Concealment.”

She does. Or tries, anyway. It’s hard to keep the nothing-feeling of Concealment steady and true with Lankin’s sharp, sharp eyes on her. She falters, lets it slip away, grimaces apologetically at Lankin.

Lankin tuts at her. “Come on. I know you can do better than that.”

“Sorry.” Stomach churning with guilt and discomfort, she tries again. This time goes better, even if it feels a bit odd to wear the Concealment directly on top of her real skin. Lankin appraises her, his eyebrows knitting slightly as he strains to focus on her, and nods in approval.

“There, now turn it outwards—just flip it inside out—”

“But I don’t know how.”

“It’s just like how I taught you before,” he says. The bite of impatience is stronger in his voice. “Feel for the catch, and hold it, and instead of pulling it away, you flip it—no, no, no, not like _that!_ ” The Concealment’s come right off at her tug, leaving Eliza standing there in the middle of the creek, totally visible and totally undisguised. She flinches.

“I’m—I’m trying, I’m trying,” she says, hurriedly pulling another Concealment up over her pointed ears and leafy hair. “Put it on, and then turn it, I can do it, I understand.” She frowns and tries again, dares a glance at Lankin—sighs in relief, because he’s given her another curt nod. This feels even stranger than before, like her body is shouting the truth of itself so loud it rings off the surrounding trees. Unpleasant, and she squirms in place, waiting for the next instruction.

“Hah. You _are_ a natural, aren’t you,” he says. “Now, hold it there. Just hold it. And think of what your human disguise looks like.” 

“Y—yes.”

“Have you got it? Picture it very clearly in your head. Very, very clearly.”

“Okay—”

“Now put that into the magic. You can feel it telling everyone what you are, yes? Just lead it through that image.”

“What? I don’t understand—oh, no—” She’s let the Concealment slip again. Lankin suppresses a sigh as she throws it back on, turns it back inside out, loses her grip, repeats the whole process. She shoots him a desperate look through the quivering shell of the second inside-out Concealment. “Can’t you just do it for me? Make another glamour like the one I had before? I’m sorry, I’m too stupid, I don’t understand, I can’t do it.”

“Certainly. I _could_.” He wrinkles his nose. “But in a handful of years, you’d be in the exact same boat, with a fading glamour and a lot of humans around ready to catch you, and no guarantee that someone would be around to help you out of your mess. I’m trying to show you how to help yourself, Miss Eliza. Come on, now. I know you’re smart. You can’t just give up as soon as things get a little difficult. How will you ever get anything done, going through life that way?”

Something about that lands like a fist to Eliza’s chest, swift and blunt and painful. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll try again.”

Lankin flicks his cloak back over his shoulder and folds his arms and stares off over Eliza’s head while she gathers herself. She can picture her human face, her human body, as she’s seen them in the bathroom mirror, or the big mirror on Mommy and Daddy’s closet door. Smooth skin with the barest hint of freckle, yes, straight dark hair, rounded ear-tips and soft childish features and human eyes with a rim of white around the iris. Not her, not really, but the _her_ she should be.

 _I_ want _to look like that_ , Eliza thinks. The edge of her mind brushes against that shouting-feel from her inside-out Concealment. It curls against her, almost like a living thing itself. _I_ need _to look like that. Everyone needs to see that when they look at me. I need you to tell everyone that that’s what I am. Please. Please. Listen to me._

Another curling sensation. Eliza pushes against it with the picture in her head. _Come on. Come on. Take this. Show everyone this. Do it. Do it!_

A flicker—a melding, two energies like a pair of magnets snapping together—a fullbody shudder, a moment of choking, muffled, oppressive closeness—Eliza lets out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding, and Lankin laughs, claps a few times. “There, now, _that’s_ it! Didn’t I say you could do it?”

Eliza presses her hands to her face, runs her fingers over her head. Smooth skin and silken hair. She reaches over her shoulder. The fabric of her shirt doesn’t bow in under her fingers; it wrinkles against something that feels very much like a human back. A tiny, startled laugh escapes her.

“I—it worked. It did, it really did. I did it.” She scrabbles at her face again. “Does it, did I do it right? Do I look right? Do I look normal?”

“As human as anyone could wish.”

“It feels different from the other glamour. It’s tickly.”

“It’s new, my dear, you have to get some wear into it before it sits comfortable. And it’s your own magic to boot, not some seelie hedge-witch’s—” He stops mid-sentence, clearing his throat, but Eliza’s too fascinated by her new glamour to pay it much mind. _She_ did this. She can change her own shape, just by thinking about it. She can do _magic_. Experimenting, she brushes the glamour away, stands there in her own skin, pulls it back on. It’s easier the second time, as the living, curling feeling (the magic, _her_ magic!) gets a sense of what she expects it to do. And it’s easier still the third time. It’s wonderful, dizzying—now she’ll never have to worry about someone catching her true shape again, never have to be afraid that she’ll scare Mommy and Daddy and her sisters!

And, speaking of her sisters…Eliza blinks, looks around the creek clearing. She forgets, sometimes, that her night vision is so much better than the rest of her family’s; while she’s been standing here, getting her lesson, the last of the sunlight has gone, leaving everything that velvety dusk-blue of a summer evening. “Oh, no, I have to go, Mister Lankin, I’m sorry,” she stammers. “I told—m-myself—that I’d be back before the sun went down, and it’s down now, and if I’m out too long someone will come looking for me…”

“Ah, quite understandable. I did say I had to be off around this time as well, didn’t I? But we can spare a minute or two for goodbyes, I think. Don’t worry, I’ll see to it no one comes nosing around until we’re done.” He bows elegantly, extends a slender hand towards Eliza. She giggles and curtsies (much more clumsily), puts her left hand in his so he can drop a kiss to the back of it. He’s just like a storybook prince. Maybe he really _is_ a prince, and it’s a secret, like in stories and books and fairytales, and Eliza’s just walked through his story. That would be a lovely thing.

“Thank you,” is all she says to him, though. “Thank you for teaching me. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you weren’t there.”

“Of course, Miss Eliza. I’m glad I could be in the right place at the right time.” He smiles at her, sweet enough to make her head spin, and then continues, “Now, as to the matter of your payment…”

“P-payment?” That draws Eliza up short. Lankin never said anything about payment before! “Oh—um. I don’t have any money. Or, wait, I saved a dollar from the last time I lost a tooth, but I’d have to go back home to get it, and…”

“That’s not what I mean, Eliza, dear. I don’t need money.” He turns her small, chubby hand over in his long-fingered one, his skin cool against her wrist. “You’re very special, you see. My mistress sent me to find a child just like you. Do you know why? You have something she needs very badly so she can work her own magics. You ought to see them. Great, powerful magics, ones that make what I just taught you seem like a butterfly’s sneeze. She’ll be ever so grateful to you for giving it to me.”

“But I don’t have anything like that—you, you just taught me, before this I didn’t know any—”

“That’s perfectly fine. The thing we need from you is something simple, something you’ve had your whole life. Can you guess what it is?” His voice is light, as airy as ever, but Eliza has sharp ears, and she hears the heavy cloth of his coat rustle against something that’s not a fold of fabric.

She glances down at his other hand.

“ _No_ —” she chokes out, but he’s suddenly crushing her arm in a viselike grip, too tight for her to wriggle free. The fading daylight glints ember-red off the long, cruel spike of a knife, carved from what looks like dark glass.

“Shh, don’t squeak, now, little mouse, don’t struggle.” Lankin blinks once, slowly, lizardlike. “They can’t hear you. You’re not the only one who can hide, remember? I’ve got everything nice and quiet and hushed up. They’ll come for you, perhaps, but only after I’m done with you.”

“Please,” sobs Eliza, “please, please, please, please—”

“Ah, ah, none of that. Just go easy, now, my dear, nice and easy and it won’t hurt a bit, Lankin keeps his knives nice and lovely and sharp, it’ll be quick as a wink. Shhh, easy.” How can his voice still sound so sweet and reasonable when he’s _hurting_ her, squeezing her arm so hard she thinks her bones will shatter into a million fragments? She tries to cry out for Mommy or Daddy or Angie or _someone_ , but he’s done something to the air when she wasn’t looking, something that makes it thick and sticky and intractable. Her shouts just get stuck in it, muffled, like she’s yelling into a pillow, and it floods her throat, clots, stops up her voice.

“Help me,” is all that comes out, in a pathetic mewl. “You said—you said you were going to help me.”

“I’m not cruel,” Lankin says as he lays the knife against her hand, ignoring her words completely. “She asked for a pound of flesh from a changeling, my mistress did, but you’re so small, that’d practically be your whole arm off. I’m a good hunter. I can make up the difference elsewhere. And you’ve given me a new word, besides. _Zompy._ For that, I’ll see to it you heal clean, no scars, no lasting damage. Which is more generosity than a Seelie court’s castoff deserves, but what can I say, I have a soft heart.”

“You _lied_.”

“No one ever said I had to tell the truth.” The edge of his smile catches on her soul. “Hush, now. It’ll all be over in a moment, little one.”

Eliza’s mouth gapes silently.

 _Flash_ goes the knife as it cuts, straight down.

And then Eliza is lying on her side in the creek bed, mud squished against her cheek. It’s cold, and there are bits of gravel biting into her skin, and it doesn’t feel good. But it’s all she can seem to register; the rest of her body’s gone quite numb, except for a distant tingle, like a limb fallen asleep. Waiting for sensation to snap back in. A long dark slant of shadow over her; Lankin looking down, humming a cheery little tune under his breath. _Swish, swish_ , he wipes his knife on the hem of his cloak, sheathes it away. Spreading dark stain on the green fabric there when he lets it swing loose.

“One last lesson for you, my dear, and this I’ll give you free of charge, upon my honor.” A soft _splash_ as he kneels in the shallow water to lean close. He waves a thin pale little object at her. She can’t train her vision on it, her brain feels all fuzzy. What is it? “A true faery knows: you never, never, _never_ take what’s offered you before you ask its price. Because you never know when that price is going to be more than you can pay.”

Eliza moves her head back a little. Blinks against the mud in her eye, and her vision snaps into focus.

The thing in Lankin’s hand is a child’s finger.

And then her hand is _on fire_ , searing, freezing, worse than a thousand metal burns, a thousand skinned knees, a thousand bee stings. A low _whoosh_ , more felt than heard, as Lankin’s stricture raises from over the creek, and Eliza drags in a breath and screams at last, screams, screams and screams and screams until it feels like her throat will tear open. Dark puddles in the mud, washing away in little swirls in the clear creek water. Dark blood gushing from her hand, from the awful empty space where her left pinky finger had been, more blood than Eliza’s ever seen before in her life.

And through the screams ringing in her ears—a door slamming open, far-off footsteps drawing closer through the meadow grass, someone calling her name. _Eliza, Eliza, where are you? We’re coming, Eliza, we’re coming, hold on_. Daddy’s voice. _I’m here, please, it hurts, help me_ , she tries to call, but all she can seem to do is let out those wounded-animal shrieks, curl up in a ball with her hand clutched to her chest, streaks of blood and mud staining her shirt black as ink.

“Goodness me. That was quick,” Lankin says, standing up fluid as a cat’s stretch. “They do seem to care about you, don’t they? Aren’t you a lucky, lucky, lucky little changeling. Not many of your kind get even that much. Usually it’s the well or the hearth or the cold iron, right off the bat. How sweet of yours to spare you. Or how stupid.”

“ _Eliza! Betsey, baby, I’m coming, I’m almost there, keep shouting if you can hear me—_ ”

“And who knows,” Lankin purrs, light and malicious, “now that I’ve taught you to fix your face, you might make it another handful of years before they toss you on the fire and demand their _real_ child back.”

“ _Daddeeeeeeeeeeeeee_ ,” Eliza finally howls, the word clawing its way out of her with a frantic life of its own. Her eyes are scrunched closed against the pain arcing up her arm towards her shoulder, but she hears Lankin’s quiet laugh, the rush of the creek interrupted by his retreating footsteps. Leaving, he’s leaving, but that doesn’t fix anything, and her agony-wracked brain spits out a nonsense thought that fills her with pure terror: _if he leaves you alone, and Daddy doesn’t make it here in time, the pain will come out of your arm and into the rest of your body and eat you alive, all the way down to your bones_. “No, noooooooo,” she screams. “No, Daddy, please, Daddy, _Daddy_ —”

A crashing in the brush, the sliding rush of a heavy body coming down the creek bank all uncontrolled. “Betsey—oh, God, baby, no, no—” And then warm, strong arms around her, lifting her out of the mud, pressing her against something solid and real.

“Daddy,” Eliza rasps out. Tries to add something more, but her brain seems to have run out of words. “Daddy,” she repeats, “Daddy, Daddy,” and then a rush of hoarse, sick sobbing.

“Stay with me, Betsey, okay? Just look at me, baby, look at me—that’s it, that’s it. You’re doing so good. We’re going home. You’re safe now.” Daddy’s voice is weak and trembly, like Eliza’s never heard it get before, but she does her best to focus on his face, or at least on the smeared blur where his voice is coming from. _Clever girl, sharp eyes_. Not anymore, her eyes don’t work and her hand hurts so much she wants to die and she’s stupid, stupid, stupid for having gone off on her own, for ever having listened to Lankin.

Her fading brain manages to dredge another word up out of the darkness rising up around her. “Sorry. ‘M sorry.”

“Shh, honey, don’t worry about that now, don’t worry. It’s not your fault.”

 _But it is, it_ is, Eliza thinks. _I didn’t listen to Mommy, I made a bad choice._ Her train of thought fractures, spirals off on an odd tangent, the voice echoing in her head sounding very much like Lankin’s and murmuring things she’s never put into words. _No wonder They took my name, no wonder They wanted to get rid of me, no wonder they left me with these humans and ran off laughing. I can’t do anything right, I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not_ anything _enough…_

But of course she can’t say any of this out loud, and then Daddy brushes gentle gentle fingers over her left hand, which sends a blue-white bolt of agony rocketing through her body, scatters all rational thought like leaves in the wind. She lets out a shrill whine through clenched teeth and then, as though it’s had as much as it can take, her body goes quite limp. Her mangled hand on her chest feels like it weighs a million pounds. She’s tired. She’s so tired. Her head sags against Daddy’s arm.

“No, no—Betsey, baby, you have to stay awake for me, okay? Just until we get to the house, just until then. It’s not so far. We’ll be there soon. And then—Mommy will be there, and I’ll still be there, and we’ll get a doctor for you, and everything will be fine, just fine…”

“Sorry.”

“No, no, don’t be sorry. Don’t say that. Just stay awake. Baby, _please_.”

“…Try.” With a monumental effort, Eliza pries one eye open. A faint glimmer in her vision; the light from the upstairs window of the house. It looks as distant as the moon, but at least it stands out from the indistinct patches of dark and darker that everything else in the world has become. She trains her sights on it, as best she can. “I’ll…try.”

“Good girl. I love you, Betsey. I love you. Stay with me.”

 _Crash, crunch, crash_ , Daddy stumbles towards the house through the tangle of summer greenery, Eliza lolling in his arms. No grace in his steps; he’s loud enough to scare off every living thing with a working pair of ears for miles around, loud enough to announce his careless, noisy humanity to the world. Not loud enough, though, to drown out the voice, softer than a sigh, that wafts through the air to Eliza’s ears, sending a chill down her spine that’s lost as Daddy crests the slope and pushes his way past the treeline and into the dusky meadow.

“A pleasure doing business with you, Miss Eliza.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title and name for the unsavory gentleman in question from the traditional English-language ballad ["Long Lankin"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpP03dvPfsE). Alternately, we can call it a graceless reference to _Lords and Ladies_ by Terry Pratchett, whichever you like.


End file.
